Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Brushes with Badassery, or How I Met Tom Stafford

I'm basically copying this text from my Tumblr blog, As Only NASA Can, but I wanted to recap my Apollo 16 Anniversary experience at KSC. Oh, it was beyond amazing.

Anyway, we did our bus tour and disembarked at one point near the
shuttle/Apollo launch pads (39A to be specific). A bus rolled up and out
came Stafford and Gordon. Gordon was drinking water like a boss. He was
dispatched to the other tour bus.

Anyway, TP (Tom Stafford's nickname) strolled up to our group. I seriously thought I was going
to collapse and couldn’t believe it. I’ve been looking at pictures of
this guy in books for over 30 years and to see him in real life -
knowing he was real and not some unreal figure from a book who
accomplished all the things he did - was downright surreal.

I muttered something incomprehensible about Apollo 10 (“That looked
fun!” - One of the derpiest comments I’ve ever made to anyone) and he
was like, “Yeah. I did that. With John Young and Gene Cernan.” In the
same voice most people say, “Yeah, I went to the store.” I couldn’t stop
smiling. Having TP look directly at you is crazy.

After our bus tour (I sound like such a jerk, but I’ve seen the KSC
facilities and was in a stupor by this point) we disembarked again at
the Apollo Saturn V center. He was standing there being pursued by some
dudes who wanted to talk. I went up to him and just said, “General, I
just want to shake your hand.” He smiled and shook my hand and said,
“Why, thank you, young lady.” Now I can tell my descendants that I shook
a space pioneer’s hand. Holy crap.

I didn’t get an opportunity to speak to Duke, Mitchell or Haise
(everyone was pretty pressed for time) but it was so weird to see those
guys there and not in my space books I collected as a child. Duke still
looks boyish and young. Mitchell is DEEP and strikes me as being
extremely intelligent and underrated. Haise was unexpectedly hilarious.
Here’s a real snippet from their panel discussion:

Member of audience: What does the moon smell like?
Duke: Well, you don’t get to smell it in the suit, but the dust in the LM smelled like gunpowder.
Mitchell: Yeah. It smelled like lava.
Haise: Well… (At this point everyone cracked up)

Also, Charlie Walker is the nicest dude ever. He’s another one I used
to read about in the 1980s. Holy CRAP I can’t believe any of this stuff
happened to me. I am still in shock. Walker’s lecture was pretty
awesome, too and very inspiring. He worked for McDonnell Douglas and
ended up becoming an astronaut himself. Amazing.